The Land, The People, and a Proper Economy

Longtime friend of The Land Institute, Wendell Berry delivers the Strachan Donnelley Lecture on Conservation and Restoration at the 2016 annual Prairie Festival in Salina, Kansas.

[@ioneharris9807]

I so love Wendell Berry

[@rachelolivieri6463]

It is instructive, if not revealing, that a man who has spent his life developing a thoughtful understanding of the human requirements to enhance, preserve and protect the fertility of the land, the husbandry, the responsibility, the affection, and the historic value of regional knowledge practiced by agrarians, past from one generation to another to insure the continued viability of life, now and into the future, is utterly unknown to the vast majority of the human population which is totally dependent upon both that knowledge and those practices.
That universal detachment produced and generated by the industrial technologies, to maintain market dominance at the expense of the viability of the land, water resources, and the long term health and well being of human populations, reflects both its ungainly power, its misguided short term priorities for profit, and finally, its ultimate demise.
Listen and learn.

[@athensga67]

53:58 "'Inevitable' is a word much favored by people in positions of authority who do not wish to think about problems."

[@nedimalbayrak5442]

I wish the speech is available for downloading.

[@cultibotics]

Is there a transcript available?

[@ncooty]

I've been a fan of Mr. Berry for a few years, but this talk lessened that regard. The introduction was better than the talk. For someone so ostensibly enamored of language, clarity, and details, Mr. Berry here ironically used language to substitute hazy nostalgia for prescriptions and to allude obliquely to so-called traditional values as if tradition were itself a value. There's value in many of the broad themes he mentions--particularly in linking humanity with ecology and dignity with economy--but after listening to this talk, he now seems to me unwilling to disentangle evidence from intuition, and his folksy anti-intellectualism seems less quaint than ignorant and dangerous.

[@ncooty]

@@Makeloafnotwar: Do you honestly think your life would be no different (or might even be better) were it not for the work of physicists?

[@samdg1234]

I just was made aware of this man this past week. I've looked into him a bit, but I can't really wrap my head around what goal he is that can withstand critique. Is he against making things with less effort? I just bought 10 pairs of socks at Costco, very high quality, for $20. That is 1 dollar per sock. I don't know how they are made, but it wouldn't surprise me that they are hardly touched by a person. After composing this last sentence. I looked for a UA-cam video on it. I'll try and link it in a following comment. Is Berry against such mass production that can make a sock for a dollar that would cost in excess of $100 for a sock of less quality? Bringing it back to farming, is he against tractors? How about plows? How about shovels? By what metric does he establish a stopping point of mechanization or industrialization? What about milking a cow. Can one person with multiple machines, not milk 50 or more times faster than a person milking by hand? How does Mr. Berry propose we afford to buy socks, milk, and a myriad other things? Is it possible that he doesn't know himself? It is certainly possible that I just don't understand him?